This invention pertains to the field of routing scanned document information. More specifically, this invention pertains to the use of scanned control sheets to route scanned document information to an existing location.
Scanners are commonly used in business enterprises and other organizations to convert paper documents into electronic form. Because scanners are expensive, complex pieces of equipment, it is common for many persons in an organization to share the use of a single scanner. Typically, the scanned document information generated when a user scans a document is stored in a default location. When the scanner is attached to a computer network, the scanned document information may ultimately be moved over the network to a desired location on the network, for instance a particular sub-directory of a user""s file directory. In order to do this, however, the user needs to interact with a computer on the network after the document has been scanned.
Rather than putting scanned document information in a default storage area until claimed by someone on the network, a scanner may allow a user to enter a desired destination prior to scanning. Then the scanned document information can be routed directly to the desired destination, without further user intervention.
With either of these conventional systems, however, a user may not place a number of separate documents, each with a separate destination, into the scanner and expect the scanned document information to arrive at the correct locations without further intervention. When using a system of the first type, the user will need to later use a computer on the network to move the scanned document information to the appropriate locations. With the second type of system, the user will need to enter each separate destination into the scanner prior to the scanning of each document. Even though it may take a while for the scanner to work its way through each document, the user will typically need to wait for the scanner to finish scanning each document in order to enter the next destination.
What is needed is a scanning system which allows a user to communicate a desired destination for a scanned document in a way which allows the destination information to stay with the physical document. This would allow a set of documents, each with a unique destination, to be scanned and routed automatically, without further user intervention. This would also allow documents to be routed without the user having to interact with a computer.
The present invention is a system and method for directing the routing of scanned document information (110) with control sheets (102). A control sheet (102) is typically a piece of paper with graphical information on it. This information indicates to the system where the scanned document information (110) should be routed. It may be in the form of human-readable writing, it may be in the form of machine-readable markings, or it may be a combination of the two. The system retrieves this information by scanning the control sheet (102). In one embodiment, the invention routes the scanned document information (110) to the destination (120) which most nearly matches the scanned control sheet information (108). This allows for proper operation in the case of minor errors in the analysis of the control sheet information (108).